Zagat picks for good restaurants on a business trip

— -- It's the red snapper with raspberry chipotle sauce and lump crab meat that makes business trips to Galveston, Texas, special for Greg Newell.

Newell, who works in the software industry and travels frequently, says the red snapper at Rudy & Paco restaurant is one of his favorite dishes.

"I always look forward to a trip to Galveston, so I can stop in for that snapper dish as well as a breakfast stop at The Donut Shoppe, home to the Bronco Burrito," says Newell, of Riverview, Fla. "Yum."

Good food and top-quality restaurants mean a lot to many business travelers. They provide a memorable dining experience and a welcome break from the stresses of constant travel. They're also great places to impress or bond with a client.

Business travelers looking for the best of the best may want to heed the findings of Zagat Survey, which today announces the country's top restaurants, in its view.

The restaurant guidebook publisher says 30 restaurants received a score of 29 out of a possible 30 for food. Most are very expensive and have impeccable service and attractive décor.

Zagat Survey also announced the top five restaurants for food in 45 areas of the country. The complete list can be found at travel.usatoday.com.

Unexpected locations

Surprisingly, it isn't food capitals such as the New York and Los Angeles metropolitan areas with the most restaurants with a 29 food score. Five restaurants in Sacramento or within an hour's drive — Ambience, Mulvaney's, Taste, The Kitchen and Sunflower Drive In — earned the coveted score.

At Mulvaney's Building & Loan in downtown Sacramento, the menu for Oct. 18 featured as appetizers warm chanterelle and trumpet mushroom salad, and Cuban bean soup. Entrees included 28-day dry-aged rib-eye steak with chimichurri butter and Alaskan halibut with olive tapenade. Appetizers ranged from $8 to $13, and large-plate entrees were priced from $28 to $36.

Mulvaney's Building & Loan offers a "daily changing menu of luscious, adventurous farm-to-table New American dishes in a quaint old fire station with a lovely patio," Zagat Survey and its reviewers say.

Unlike most of Zagat Survey's top restaurant choices, Sunflower Drive In in Fair Oaks, Calif., has "no décor," and diners order at a window, Zagat Survey and its reviewers say. But people "drive miles out of their way to eat there" for "awesome-tasting, good-value vegan health food," they say.

Four restaurants in the New York area scored a 29 for food, though only two —Le Bernardin and Daniel — are in Manhattan. North Fork Table is on Long Island's eastern end in Southold — about a two-hour drive from the city — and Sushi Nanase is in White Plains in suburban Westchester County.

The Chicago, Milwaukee and Washington metropolitan areas each have three restaurants with a 29 food score.

Chicago's Alinea serves "amazing avant-garde food in a labor-intensive multi-course wild ride that incorporates all the senses," Zagat says. A three-course dinner with a drink and a tip at the "progressive New American gastronirvana" is an estimated $199 per person.

At Washington's Belgian-French restaurant Marcel's, master chef Robert Wiedmaier "orchestrates culinary miracles" in "a romantic Proven?al setting," Zagat says.